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The fashion world grows up — at least for a season

In the fashion industry, looking forward to fall is the equivalent of looking back. Six months ago, when designers in New York and Europe unveiled their fall 2010 collections, it was hard to be enthusiastic about the prospect of another season of bundling up. Shoppers were worn down from a winter of blizzards and more blizzards. Folks were dreaming of beaches and bikinis; was anyone but the most devoted fashion aficionados really paying attention to joyful talk of cashmere and wool?

The aesthetic of Phoebe Philo's Fall/Winter 2010 collection was clean and spare: clothing for the confident woman. (PETER STIGTER)

By Robin GivhanThe Washington Post

Mon., Sept. 13, 2010

In the fashion industry, looking forward to fall is the equivalent of looking back. Six months ago, when designers in New York and Europe unveiled their fall 2010 collections, it was hard to be enthusiastic about the prospect of another season of bundling up. Shoppers were worn down from a winter of blizzards and more blizzards. Folks were dreaming of beaches and bikinis; was anyone but the most devoted fashion aficionados really paying attention to joyful talk of cashmere and wool?

One hopes so. Because designers, in their role as esthetic soothsayers, wisely foresaw a need for clothes with a more sophisticated and polished sensibility. They believed consumers were hungry for styles created with grown-ups as their inspiration — not rock star wannabes, overindulged teenagers or even social-climbing philanthropists.

If the suddenly serene and sophisticated clothes come as a pleasant surprise, the industry’s accompanying cultural shift is even more astounding . . . and gratifying. Diversity, in permutations from race to weight, has been seriously addressed.

It’s too soon to know whether the industry will continue on this path of righteousness and goodwill. The spring 2011 collections have just begun to roll out in New York. So let’s enjoy this moment — this fashion limbo between the past and the future — while we can.

A handful of collections epitomized the shift in aesthetics for fall. Designer Miuccia Prada delivered a collection that emphasized a narrow waist, a full bust and noticeable hips. To underscore her point — that the hourglass figure is worth celebrating — she used Victoria’s Secret models in her Milan show. She chose these women because, unlike her boyishly shaped runway regulars, they have built a career on their curves.

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A complimentary message came from designers Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein and Phoebe Philo at Céline. Their collections were clean and spare. Philo cut white shirts with tiny Peter Pan collars and easy dresses with a dropped waist. Costa’s highlights included a collarless black coat, a sheath in dueling textures of black fabric and a suit jacket with balloon sleeves. Only a supremely confident woman would be drawn to these garments, in part because they make no promises about dazzling an audience on her behalf or helping her create an alter ego. This woman can mesmerize on her own and her ego is just fine. These clothes aren’t camouflage or armour. They are merely beautiful frocks stitched out of luxurious fabrics, and that is more than enough to recommend them.

That cool pragmatism and rationality comes through in the industry’s wider embrace. Designers had been wrestling with the issue of diversity for years. And many of them were recently called out by some of the industry’s most high-profile members — model Naomi Campbell, Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani, activist Bethann Hardison — for their homogeneously white runways. For fall, models of colour had a more pronounced presence on the catwalks in New York and in Europe.

As the baby boomers age, the great glut of fashion customers are now deep into their 40s and 50s. And it has become impossible for designers to ignore the numbers of Hollywood starlets who have settled into their 40s. Women such as Demi Moore are still wearing runway samples and delighting in youthful trends. So it only made sense that older women were part of the mix at the Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs shows.

And finally, society’s anger over twig-thin models, many of whom were dangerously skinny, stopped falling on deaf ears. After successful models spoke up about the pressure to remain sickly thin, and editors began to express their distaste for using such fragile-looking creatures, the numbers of models who look wan and ill has noticeably declined.

Plus-size women are making their fashion desires known. It would be a stretch to say Seventh Avenue has become enamoured of full-figured customers. That’s simply not the case. There has not been a rush of high-end labels looking to expand into sizes 14, 16 or 18. But a more womanly shape is in vogue for fall — and not just at Prada. Instead of creating clothes that look their best on a tomboyish, adolescent figure, designers have taken on the challenge of creating clothes that must navigate hips and breasts.

For fall, designers, so used to leading the way in defining beauty and desirability, became followers. This time, the aesthetics followed the social shifts, the mainstream demands and the watchdog protests. The result is an industry that — for the moment — looks smart, sophisticated and self-assured.

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